Transhumanism in Africa

Amara Esther Chimakonam, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for African Phenomenology, Department of Philosophy, University of Fort Hare, South Africa. She obtained her PhD from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research primarily focuses on African philosophy, African phenomenology, ethics, Applied ethics (specifically bioethics: transhumanism, moral enhancement, surrogacy), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics. As a member of the Conversational School of Philosophy (CSP), she applies conversational and interrogatory methods in examining these fields from an African perspective. Her thesis was on the idea of transhumanism through an Afro-communitarian lens. She has published and presented several research papers at conferences, webinars, colloquia, and workshops. She recently propounded a personhood-based theory of right action as an African contribution to the field of ethics. AE Chimakonam has organized and co-organized several international conferences and has ongoing research collaborations with scholars in various universities. She has received awards and funding from various organizations such as the Commonwealth Scholarship and the John Templeton Foundation. Recently, Dr AE Chimakonam and colleagues received a British Academy Mentoring grant of £ 30,000. She is the editor-in-chief of the journal, Ezumezu: African Perspectives on Logic, Transhumanism and AI Ethics.

• Chapter 1. On Transhumanism in Africa (Chimakonam).- Chapter 2. Moral Enhancement, Ubuntu, and the Space of Questioning (Janz).- Chapter 3. More than Human: Ubuntu and Genetic Engineering (Oelofsen).- Chapter 4. Morally Enhanced Cyborgs (Sorgner).- Chapter 5. A Moral Evaluation of Transhumanism Alignment with Botho’s Metaphysics (Sesiro).- Chapter 6. Can Morally Enhanced Individuals Attain Personhood Within An African Philosophical Context? (Fayemi).- Chapter 7. Should Africa Be Hopeful in the Emergence of Technologized Personhood? (Negedu).- Chapter 8. Will Moral Enhancement Lead to Technologized Personhood? (Chimakonam).- Chapter 9. Is There a Masculine Bias to Transhumanism? Insights from a (Trans)Human Conversation (Yu and Harris).- Chapter 10. Transhumanism and African Futures: Charting African Modernist Pathways to Human Enhancement (Abdul).- Chapter 11. Technology, Transhumanism and the Politics of Development in Africa (Oyekan).